THE CITY STREETS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20834, 28 September 1929, Page 12

THE CITY STREETS.

It is at least reassuring to learn from the chairman of the Works Committee of the City Council that, as he stated this week in the course of a discussion respecting the city streets, he did not admit it was a correct assumption that the committee was satisfied with the existing condition of things. The reverse, he said, was the case. If that conclusion has been difficult to draw from the committee’s report it can only be because of the committee’s successful disguising of its real feelings. Councillor Wilson’s disclaimer of satisfaction, however, was not too clearly consistent with sojne other of his remarks, particularly with his statement that never before have the streets been in as good condition as they are in to-day. A general assertion of that kind respecting our streets is calculated to provoke the suggestion that the author of it is avoiding the facts of the situation. There are certain streets, no doubt, that'are a credit to the city, but the majority of them are not in a condition such as to excite admiration or even reasonable gratification. It is pleaded, of course, that the Works Committee is -doing its very best, and all that can reasonably be expected of it, with the funds at its disposal. This necessarily raises the question whether, the funds are being used to the. best possible advantage, and whether the money available for street maintenance and reconstruction, is being expended with all. due regard to considerations of economy and efficiency of method. This is a matter in respect of which, it is to bo admitted, figures of relative costs that are not based upon corresponding specifications are apt. to be misleading. Councillor Marlow, a member of the Works Committee, went much beyond anything conceded in the reservations that were' embodied in the committee’s report when he acknowledged that the streets are far below what he would wish them to be, and he raised an -interesting point when he said that he would oppose putting down expensive concrete roads over small distances in place of making passable roads over longer distances. Certainly the impression has been created that the interests of economy have not been so successfully studied as the Works Committee would contend in 1 the methods that have been adopted. It is true that these methods, where they are applied, may make for greater durability, and their cost may . thus be counter-balanced by the longer life of the street or road concerned. But that is a point upon which there is no reliable information or assurance. The fact remains, despite the committee’s report and despite the adoption of it by the Council, that the condition of a great many of the .streets of the city distinctly invites criticism.